Even better, now others in his town can get them if they wish to without a big fight.
Sure, Kimstu. If you don’t mind I’ll link to articles from the NYT and Washington Post that, in both, reference some of the professionals and scientists involved in the questioning of several of Mr. Gore’s assertions rather than reference each singly.
The British judge’s assessment of “alarmism and exaggeration” in his decision whether or not to allow schools to even show the film would appear fairly leveled.
Criticizing Gore’s award because he has a big house is quite a bit like criticizing Norman Borlaug’s because Borlaug enjoyed big steak dinners.
The NYT article hardly points to a deceptiveness in “An Inconvenient Truth”. It points outs, correctly, that he glossed over some points, used several of the more extreme possibilities and pretty much got some of the science wrong for a scientist, but not for a politician.
His worse mistake was drawing a connection between Katrina and Global Warming, but even there, I see some wiggle room. To me he was trying to point out that as the Ocean’s heated up, we would see more devastating storms like Katrina, not so much saying Global Warming caused Katrina.
The Washington post piece is nice as it point to specific problems. They seem like legitamite concerns to me. The judge is correct, however the Judge also found
Gore tended to point to aspects of Global Warming on the more extreme scale of what can happen. This documentary or movie was meant to be a wake up call. A one point I find interesting is #8.
I could be wrong, but I think that information came out after the movie. It is harsh to nail Gore as wrong on this, however the judge is correct to add notes about it to the course load if the film is used for teaching.
Jim
TR was actively involved with the parties. In the list of previous winners you see repeated mention of “peace”, “conflict”, “arbitration”, and “mediation”. Gore and the IPCC got it “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.” That is education, not arbitration.
Yeah, and This is Spinal Tap was in a documentary style, too. 
If someone new came to this board and said Professor XYZ stated that hurricanes are caused by buffalo farts, there would be a cry of ‘Cite!” We want someone to back up the claims. Gore makes claims and John Q. Public nods his head and says, “Yup. Katrina was caused by me driving a Hummer.”
I’m not saying that the movie was a fraud but it sensationalized things and provided questionable scenarios (look at what the judge in the UK ruled for examples). When a documentary is produced are we supposed to accept it at face value or take a critical eye to it? Moore and Gore produced entertaining movies and did provide some facts. But Moore’s was no more of a documentary than was The DaVinci Code. Both had facts but neither told the complete truth.
And as I’ve said, the award belongs to the IPCC and to the many scientists and researchers who did so much. They did the work and brought it together. Gore put himself in front and gathers the honors. It’s like Susan Sarandon or Sean Penn protesting against the war, or when Jeremy Irons wore the AIDS awareness ribbon to the Tony awards. The faceless people who matter most get nothing; no press, no red carpets or award dinners. But put a celebrity in front and look out!
Climate is boring. It would be relegated to PBS, The Discovery Channel or The Weather Channel. Kids would sleep through lectures about it in school. But create a multimedia world tour for the MTV ADD population and place a celebrity (albeit one with the personality of an escapee from The Hall of the Presidents) in front and, voila! You catch peoples eyes and imaginations. You’ll never bring them into the theaters if your lector has PhD after his name.
I’m just happy I did my part to ensure Gore’s nice big house was in Tennessee and not the District of Columbia.
AFAICT, both those links provide testimony from some people who think some of Gore’s claims were irresponsibly exaggerated, and testimony from some people who think that Gore’s claims were acceptably adequate and reliable for the context of a popular film, and did not significantly misrepresent the science.
E.g., from your NYT link:
To sum up, there seem to be a large number of scientists who consider Gore’s work sufficiently accurate and reliable for the format of science popularization, and a (much?) smaller number of scientists who find certain imprecise statements of his to be unacceptable.
You seem to want to infer from this that “he was playing loose with the truth to make a point, veracity be dammed if the end result is for the common good.” I’m at a loss to figure out how you got so promptly to that conclusion. It seems to me at least equally possible that Gore presented the science as accurately as he knew how, but just got a few things wrong; or that his critics are perhaps being overly nitpicky about inaccuracies that are comparatively trivial.
Before you accept all the criticisms of Gore at face value, you might want to consider whether his critics are any more reliable themselves. For example, one of the critics quoted in the NYT article that you cited is climatologist Richard Lindzen of MIT, who complained about “shrill alarmism” in An Inconvenient Truth. But is Lindzen a trustworthy source when it comes to judging accuracy and precision in popular presentations of science? Not according to the climatologists at realclimate.org, who wrote this critique of Lindzen’s recent Newsweek op-ed on global warming:
Do these objections “bother” you and give you “a sense” that Lindzen “was playing loose with the truth to make a point, veracity be dammed if the end result is for the common good”?
Because if so, then I don’t see why you would want to trust Lindzen’s criticisms of Gore’s film. And if not, then I don’t see why the comparatively minor imperfections in Gore’s film would seem like such a big deal to you.
Mother Teresa’s had nothing to do with “peace”, “conflict”, “arbitration”, and “mediation”. I would think there are more exceptions.
Your definition of documentaries is not really germane to this op but also too narrow. Nearly all documentaries about controversial subjects are slanted one way or another. I could make an argument that Ken Burn’s Civil War was slanted heavily towards the South was wrong and the North was right, and many on this board would even object to the slant.
Additionally, you keep lumping Moore and Gore together which is unfair to Gore. Moore has many detractors from all over the political spectrum; by your association, you are bringing a negative feeling towards Gore for someone uninformed on “An Inconvenient Truth”.
Of course, we should take a critical eye to Al Gore’s movie and any other. In fact, I did and I pointed out that I saw flaws in it and I am predisposed to be favorable to his message. As you said, he did make a boring subject interesting. Something the IPCC could never have done. It is even more surprising when you consider what a boring automaton he appeared to be while still an active politician. It is specifically for this reason, that the Nobel Peace Prize Panel has him sharing the award.
Jim
How does the Academy of Motion Pictures define “documentary”? The first Oscars for Documentary Features were awarded in 1942. There were four winners:
If the titles are not evidence enough, please follow the link–you will find that all the films were propaganda. (Hey, there was a War on.) All films use a process called “editing”–except for a few like Andy Warhol’s film of the Empire State Building. Everybody talks about Moore’s “lies”–but never really lists them.
Successful Liberals always cause Conservative’s bile to rise.
And a Liberal whose decision (however unlikely) to run for President would probably result in success frightens the hell out of them.
Good.
Actually this article says: “[The judge] agreed that Mr Gore’s film was **broadly accurate' in its presentation of the causes and likely effects of climate change** but said that some of the claims were wrong and had arisen in the context of alarmism and exaggeration’.” (Bolding mine.) That seems like an accurate assessment to me.
The families of 3800 American soldiers thank you for the war in Iraq.
Aha! It’s the Brazillian Monkey Rule at work!
I would imagine that the vast majority of the members of those families voted against Al Gore, as well, so perhaps they wouldn’t feel compelled to blame Mr Moto for it.
This, I think, misleadingly suggests that Gore is just a Johnny-come-lately to environmental activism who jumped on the climate-change bandwagon to give it some celebrity publicity.
In fact, Gore has been seriously involved with environmental issues as a politician and an activist for about the past thirty years. He initiated the first Congressional hearings on the subject of greenhouse gas emissions back in the late 1970’s, which was long before he had any serious “celebrity” status to boost popular awareness of the subject. He published his first book on environmental issues, Earth in the Balance, fifteen years ago in 1992.
Gore’s been active in supporting and publicizing (and funding!) environmental and climate-change research for a long time. Whether or not you think he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize for his work in this area, it’s inaccurate to try to portray him as the equivalent of some Hollywood glitterbug whose only real contribution to a cause is to use their star persona to attract media attention.
However, some prominent scientists in the field felt that the reporter in the N.Y. Times piece did not himself present a very accurate view.
Yeah, great job with that, worked out the best for everyone. :dubious:
But the outcome doesn’t matter. Don’t you get it? The Republicans won! That’s what matters.
YOU’RE the one that designed the butterfly ballot that gave the big Jewish vote to Pat Buchanan? Or are you a Justice of the Supreme Court?
What make you think that realclimate.org is unbiased and a good source to critique Lindzen’s report? Why should we listen to them? Are they just another anti-capitalism website or do they really try to present both sides of the debate?
What makes lieu think that Lindzen is unbiased and a good source to critique Gore’s movie? Why should we listen to him?
My point is precisely that such objections cut both ways. lieu is apparently willing to believe that Gore is deliberately and dishonestly “playing loose with the truth”, based merely on having seen “dismissals by some professionals of a fair number of the film’s claims”. Well, by that token we should be equally willing to suspect Lindzen of similar dishonesty because of “dismissals by some professionals of a fair number” of Lindzen’s own claims.
As you can probably tell, I personally am not advocating this kind of Caesar’s-wife standard, where simply being accused of bias or exaggeration by a critic who can be described as a “professional” automatically destroys one’s credibility. But that seems to be the standard that lieu wants to apply to Gore’s credibility, and if so, then I think it’s only fair that he apply it to Gore’s critics as well.
“Anti-capitalism”? 
Realclimate.org is a website maintained by some professional climate science researchers for technical discussions and popular presentations of issues relating to climate science. I’m afraid I have no idea what their views are on capitalism. I suppose you could always visit their site and try to find out.